"On the tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning."Henry David Thoreau - Walden

"Be careful to sit in an elevating and inspiring place. There my thoughts were confined and trivial, and I hid myself from the gaze of travelers. Here is something in the scenery of a broad river equivalent to culture and civilization. Its channel conducts our thoughts as well as our bodies to classic and famous ports; and allies us to all that is fair and great."Henry David Thoreau - Journal Entry

"In any such view, the wild, the aboriginal, the geographical greatly predominate. The works of man dwindle, and the original features of the huge globe come out. Every single object or point is dwarfed; the valley of the Hudson is only a wrinkle in the earth's surface. You discover with a feeling of surprise that the great thing is the earth itself, which stretches away on every hand so far beyond your ken."John Burroughs - commenting on Slide Mountain in "The Heart of the Southern Catskills"

"Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,The wide creek, the mist blurred grass.The moss is slippery, though there's been no rainThe pine sings, but there's no wind.Who can leap the word's tiesAnd sit with me among the white clouds?"Han Shan - Cold Mountain Poems